1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for electrically connecting specified wires included in a wire harness to each other.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, as a joint member for electrically connecting (i.e., short-circuiting) specified wires included in a wire harness to each other, a joint member disclosed in JP-A-8-079948 is known (c.f. pages 2-3, and FIGS. 1 and 8 of JP-A-8-079948). The joint member is arranged so that a plurality of terminal receiving portions is arranged in parallel on the external peripheral of a band wound around a wire harness, and inside thereof a conductive thin plate is disposed and when wire-side terminals fixed to the terminal of each wire are inserted with each of the terminal receiving portions, the wire-side terminals come into contact with the conductive thin plate from the outside in the diameter direction; thus, the specified wires are electrically connected via the wire-side terminals.
Here, each wire-side terminal has a leaf spring-like flexible portion for coming into contact with the conductive thin plate by pressure force, and it is provided so that, when the wire-side terminal is inserted into the terminal receiving portion by force in a state where the flexible portion is flexibly deformed, the pressed-contact state between the flexible portion and the conductive thin plate are maintained.
In the joint member disclosed in JP-A-8-079948, in order to ensure the contact between the wire-side terminal and the conductive thin plate, a leaf spring-like flexible portion, which has a large dimension in height, is formed on the wire-side terminal, and further, a terminal receiving portion having a size for accommodating the flexible portion is formed parallel to the band. As a result, the thickness of the entire joint member is considerably large. Accordingly, when the joint member is wound around a wire harness, the entire joint member largely protrudes to the outside in the diameter direction from the main body portion of the wire harness, and may become an obstacle for disposing the wire harness.
The joint connector described in JP-A-8-079948 is often used for short-circuiting specified electric wires contained in a wire harness with each other, in which case the joint connector is wound around a main portion of the wire harness by an adhesive tape and fixed to the main portion of the wire harness. At this stage, if the joint connector is too high, the joint connector as it is wound sticks out greatly beyond the main portion of the wire harness and could therefore intervene disposing of the wire harness, and hence, thickness reduction of the joint connector is desired.
However, in the case of the joint connector described in JP-A-8-079948 above, it is difficult to reduce thickness of the joint connector, i.e., to reduce the height of the joint connector, because of which the joint connector when wound around the wire harness could stick out greatly. The reason is as follows.
1) Since used as the wire-side terminals are terminals including the slit grooves which extend in the height direction and in which the bus bar plates can be inserted, the terminals easily tend to be higher than ordinary wire-side terminals and the entire connector becomes accordingly high.
2) In addition, since the bus bar plates are inserted within the insulation housing along the height direction of the wire-side terminals, a guide portion for guiding the bus bar plates must be provided along the direction of the insertion in the insulation housing, and as the guide portion is disposed, the insulation housing becomes even higher.